Tag: covid-19

The panic around COVID-19 caused the people and most governments of the United States to chuck common sense in order to listen to “the experts.” The experts that were crazy wrong about most things with this pandemic. The numbers below from an article on Bloomberg.com show how stupid it is to treat places like Kentucky, Idaho, and Kansas like New York City. Heck even the rest of the State of New York didn’t have to be treated like New York City.

I’m in the Chicago area and it is stupid to treat the rest of the state like the Chicago metropolitan area. A majority of the cases in the State of Illinois are all in Cook County and the collar counties surrounding Chicago.

We reached #PeakStupid in this country.

There is no question that New York State has borne the brunt of the crisis. The Times reports that one out of every three Americans who has died from Covid-19 has been a New Yorker — 17,000 in all. New York City is one of the few places in the country — along with Detroit and New Orleans — where the hospital system has been stretched to capacity. (Although even in New York City, the most catastrophic expectations never came to pass: for instance, the Naval hospital ship Comfort, which came to New York to provide emergency beds, is being returned after treating just 179 patients.)

New York is the densest city in the country, and density is a crucial factor in spreading the virus. Yet cities and states that are far less dense have imposed the same restrictions as New York State. Idaho has a stay-at-home order; it has had 172 hospitalizations and 58 deaths as of Tuesday. 1 Kansas: 504 hospitalizations and 124 deaths. Maine: 163 hospitalizations and 51 deaths. Meanwhile, Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas never instituted a shelter-at-home order — yet the state has only 104 current hospitalizations and 52 deaths. Which suggests an obvious question: Does it make sense for these less dense places to be imposing the same restrictions as New York?

I just took a course on immunity and COVID-19 at nutrition-network.org. During the course there was an interesting graphic showing how COVID-19 affects the body and the percentages of severity that people experience when they get infected.

I’ve seen these numbers before in other places but I thought this graphic puts it all in a nice nutshell.

We’ve shut down the U.S. economy when only about 2.5% of those in critical condition from COVID-19 die. That is just nuts.

It’s always nice to get a pay bump. But in this case we’re the suckers paying the bill. Are the number of infections and deaths related to COVID-19 inflated in order for the hospital systems to cash in because they can’t perform elective procedures? Hmmmm…

Hospitals and doctors do get paid more for Medicare patients diagnosed with COVID-19 or if it’s considered presumed they have COVID-19 absent a laboratory-confirmed test, and three times more if the patients are placed on a ventilator to cover the cost of care and loss of business resulting from a shift in focus to treat COVID-19 cases.

This higher allocation of funds has been made possible under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act through a Medicare 20% add-on to its regular payment for COVID-19 patients, as verified by USA TODAY through the American Hospital Association Special Bulletin on the topic.

On tomorrow’s premiere of my new show, “Seat at the Table,” @AOC says Americans should refuse to go back to work if work doesn’t change, @SethMacFarlane reveals how he lobbied the Murdochs to fix @FoxNews, and Taylor Mac sings about art in crisis.

She is so poorly educated. It’s unconscionable that she received a degree from Boston University. They should refund her money or shut down the economics department if this is the kind of nonsense they teach.

This is just too funny. A company in Oregon can’t hire back their employees because they are making more now with the COVID-19 stimulus than when they were working. I wouldn’t go back to work either if the government was going to pay me to stay home.

The starting wage for a line cook in one of our restaurants is $15 an hour. These cooks receive at least $1 an hour in tips, so at a minimum they make $16 an hour, or $640 before taxes for a 40-hour week. The overwhelming majority of our laid-off cooks qualified for Oregon unemployment compensation of 1.25% of their annual gross wages weekly, or $416 in our example. The extra $224 a week provides a strong incentive to return to work.

But as of this week, that same employee receives $1,016 a week, or $376 more than he made as a full time employee. Why on earth would he want to come back to work?

The researchers found that the percentage of infections was indeed vastly larger than the roughly 1,000 known positive cases in the county at the time of the study. The preliminary results—the research will now undergo peer review—show that between 2.5% and 4.2% of county residents are estimated to have antibodies against the virus. That translates into 48,000 to 81,000 infections, 50 to 85 times as high as the number of known cases.

That may sound scary, but it’s great news. It suggests that the large majority of people who contract Covid-19 recover without ever knowing they were infected, and that the U.S. infection fatality rate may be more than an order of magnitude lower than authorities had assumed. Based on this seroprevalence data, the authors estimate that in Santa Clara County the true infection fatality rate is somewhere in the range of 0.12% to 0.2%—far closer to seasonal influenza than to the original, case-based estimates.

Professor Johan Giesecke, an advisor to the Swedish government and one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists is interviewed about Sweden’s non-lockdown response to COVID-19 vs. the rest of the world. I started the clip at the part that makes my point but the entire interview is informative and not fear mongering. There is no panic in Sweden over this pandemic.

So called “elective” procedures have been put on hold and some treatments for cancer have been altered because of the hysteria surrounding COVID-19. Hospitals, in some areas, have too many COVID-19 patients and have halted these supposedly less necessary treatments and surgeries. At what cost? How many people have died that other wise didn’t have to? We need to see that daily death toll along side the COVID-19 numbers.

lthough canceling procedures such as elective hernia repairs and knee replacements is relatively straightforward, for many interventions the line between urgent and nonurgent can be drawn only in retrospect. As Brian Kolski, director of the structural heart disease program at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange County, California, told me, “A lot of procedures deemed ‘elective’ are not necessarily elective.” Two patients in his practice whose transthoracic aortic valvular replacements were postponed, for example, died while waiting. “These patients can’t wait 2 months,” Kolski said. “Some of them can’t wait 2 weeks.” Rather than a broad moratorium on elective procedures, Kolski believes we need a more granular approach. “What has been the actual toll on some of these patients?” he asked.

Mr. R., a 75-year-old man with advanced heart failure, is another of Kolski’s patients for whom the toll has been great. Because he had progressive volume overload and delirium, Kolski referred him to a hospital for an LVAD workup in early March. Then, as his wife, Ms. R., told me, “the world went wonky, and everything went down the toilet.” Having begun admitting patients with coronavirus, the hospital told the couple it was kicking everyone else out. “They are telling me my husband has 6 to 12 months to live without this procedure,” Ms. R. said, “and now they are canceling it on us.” They were then quarantined at home — 2 hours away from the hospital — with no plan in place. Mr. R.’s health quickly deteriorated again, but his wife had been advised to keep him out of the hospital. When they finally had a video visit on April 9, he’d become so ill that the heart failure physician didn’t recognize him. Mr. R. was promptly admitted, and the LVAD was placed. Though Ms. R. is relieved, ongoing challenges include her husband’s persistent delirium, a visitor policy that allows her to be at the bedside only intermittently, and the need for nearby lodging that they can’t afford.

In the video above Bill Gates talks about digitally certifying people as COVID-19 free. This is crazy crazy talk. I’ve followed Bill Gate’s career, as many people have, and he is a great businessman but a terrible philanthropist. His dictatorial style and bare-knuckle business tactics have not worked in his philanthropic efforts. Since spending billions on do-gooder projects what has been solved? Nothing. Following his advice here will lead to discrimination beyond comprehension.

One thing is crystal clear. Joe Biden is not equipped to handle much of anything. It’s not his fault he’s just not the same man he was even 4 years ago.

The U.S. Dollar is nothing but funny money. How else can the government pass legislation dolling out more than $2 trillion when the nation is already deep in debt. And there’s more to come.

#Lockdown2020 is a tiny taste of socialism and it’s bad.

Shortages because prices are not allowed to fluctuate according to demand. That’s how stores run out of toilet paper.

Government requiring stores to only sell essential items (as defined by the government). That’s how we get Target and Walmart not being able to sell garden supplies while Home Depot can. That’s how major appliance stores can remain open while your local restaurant can’t. That’s how liquor stores can remain open while your local florist can’t.

Government mandating behavior. WEAR YOUR MASK SLAVE!

We’re soft and ripe for conquering.

9/11 brought the security state. COVID-19 has brought the safety state. Together we have the tyranny state.

The overreaction from 9/11 gave us the TSA and security theater of taking our shoes off, taking our belts off, and putting liquids into 3 oz. bottles. COVID-19 will bring us the safety theater of wearing masks in public and permanent social distancing.

If we’re afraid of living how will we fight off a true invasion and take-over of our country?

No one understands our federal system.

The U.S. system of government is designed to be bottom up and not top down. You are responsible first and foremost for your own health, safety, and welfare. If for some reason you can’t then it gets bumped up to your town, then your state, and then the federal government.

It’s like this because the founders of the country believed that individuals were best able to decide what was best for them at any given moment.

If done right, and each layer is not depending on the one above it, a federated system is more robust and is able to respond to what’s best for each location. Montana doesn’t need the same rules and regulations as New York. Broadalbin, New York doesn’t need the same rules and regulations as New York, New York.

The 1st Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Just try freely exercising your religion or assembling peaceably… anywhere.